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Visions VI

So, I’ve been away for a while as I worked through the semester at MTSU. It was difficult trying to adjust to my first semester of taking graduate classes at the PhD level, working in the University’s Writing Center, Teaching, and trying to write creatively all at the same time. Unfortunately, the blog was one (of many) casualties of trying to all these myriad and various endeavors at a high level.

However, to quote Hideo Kojima from the 2016 Sony E3 Conference or Chun Li from the Street Fighter series: “I’m Back!” I plan to post weekly as I always have a set time on Sundays when I can write (I just haven’t been taking advantage of that time usefully). I now intend to do so. This first post after the long hiatus is what my late uncle called a “Twofer” (Two topics in one post).

CHILDE ROLAND ON ELECTRICSPEC.COM (FREE!)

Source: YouTube.com

“Childe Roland,” my short-story about Roland and his search for the Dark Tower (based Robert Browning’s poem, “Childe Roland to the Dark Tower Came“) has been published in the November 30th, 2016 issue of Electric Spec. The issue is FREE, so you are welcome to read the story and come back here to post comments/reactions to the story.

They do solicit donations, and as they pay their writers as I mentioned in an earlier blog post, it would be awesome if you might consider a small donation to their website to help us writers out. Publication is nice, but as writers need to eat as well, publication with pay is the most preferable outcome (even if the pay is small).

You can find a link to the online magazine above, but if you just want to read Childe Roland by itself, you can find a directly link here. A word of caution: Electric Spec does switch out their stories on a quarterly basis, so if you are reading this entry long after Nov. 30th, 2016, then the story will not be available. I’ll try to post an update here (if I can remember) should this happen).

WARLIGHT IN VISIONS VI (AVAILABLE VIA AMAZON.COM IN PAPERBACK AND ON KINDLE)

My story, “WarLight” was published in Galaxies VI, edited by Carrol Fix. It is currently for sale via Amazon.com. It is available in paperback and Kindle formats with the Kindle format being by far the most inexpensive way to check out my story (currently $2.99). In addition, you will find other Sci-Fi stories included as well.

Be sure to support Carrol Fix’s anthology if you can. As a writer for anthologies, I don’t receive any additional payment for how well the anthology sells, but anthologies need to sell copies, otherwise editors like Carrol won’t create new anthologies for writers like me to publish our stories in. That’s just the way publishing works.

Thanks for reading and I will try to keep up this blog on a weekly schedule (I’m planning on a Christmas post as well as I have the same the time even though its a holiday, but I’ll wing it as I may post on Christmas Eve instead.)

This week has had its ups and downs for me. While “real” life has been very difficult in terms of my school work/teaching workload, my “writing” life has been very productive. Two of my stories were accepted for publication! I am ecstatic and it makes me thankful of all of the encouragement that I received from my blog post on rejections (about a month ago). Coming up with a system of submitting to a reasonable number of markets also helped as I wasn’t so stressed out about submission process now that I have a reasonable submission goal. The two stories that were accepted were WarLight and Childe Roland, both of which I’ve talked about previously here on the blog and both have Author’s Notes available here on the blog if you’re interested in the genesis/development of the stories.

WARLIGHT

WarLight was selected for publication by Carrol Fix as part of her Visions anthology series. It should appear in Visions VI: Galaxies. Regular readers of the blog will remember that Carrol also printed my story, Ship of Shadows in Visions IV: Space Between Stars in April of this year. I really appreciate Carrol’s publication of the story and I am hopeful that I can contribute to more of her anthologies. Visions VI: Galaxies can currently be pre-ordered from the publisher’s website, Lillicat Publishers, but the book should also be available via Amazon/Kindle (as all of the previous entries in the series have been as well).

CHILDE ROLAND

Childe Roland was selected for the November issue of Electric Spec online speculative fiction magazine (electricspec.com). It should be available at the end of November and I will update the blog with a blog entry once the story is up and available. Best of all, for readers, the issue is FREE! You won’t have to subscribe or anything like that once the story is available. They DO accept donations, so if you have some extra money, you might consider throwing some their way, but that is entirely optional. They do PAY their writers (YAY! You go Electricspec editors!), and as a teacher who is now a poor graduate student, any amount of money that I make from my writing, no matter how small, is greatly appreciated, so please consider donating if you can afford it at all.

DR STRANGE

I also saw Dr. Strange this weekend and I really enjoyed it. In the interest of time, I’m going to save the Mini-Review of it until next week, but if you like magic, cool special effects, and martial arts, then this movie will be right up your alley. I should note that it is a lot like what I was trying for with I, Magi, (especially the integration of Magic with Martial Arts), but my story and it have strong enough conceptual differences that (hopefully) will keep my story from looking like an “also-ran” of Dr. Strange now that the movie has been released.

So, I received a rejection this week on Here Be Monsters. It stung particularly hard–not because it was a rejection or what was said in the rejection letter. I was able to compartmentalize and objectively take the rejection in the spirit it was given: to help improve my writing for that specific market. No, what stung was that I wanted to send it right back out, but I didn’t have a market ready for it to go to at the time it was rejected. I had to wait (the WORST thing for me when I get a rejection) in order to send it out again. That’s when I discovered a flaw with my submission process. One market isn’t enough (& leads to the situation I just found myself in with HBM) and five (5) markets is too many. Trying to decide where the story should go next, what market is open, how long it takes, do I have another market ready if this comes back too quickly, will this be out too long to keep if from going to this new anthology? Questions like that make it too difficult to try to have a reserve of markets available to submit to after a rejection. So, I’m going with just two (2) markets per story. I submit to one and then have a backup market ready to go if the story is rejected. Once I move on to the second market, I’ll then find two (2) more markets to submit to if it is rejected that second time. This way, I will (mostly) have a market ready to send a story to immediately and I won’t feel so stung by a rejection–kinda’ hard to obsess about a rejection when you’re already hopeful that the next market will see the potential in your story. As the quote above indicates–“adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, add what is specifically your own.” I know obsessing about rejections doesn’t do me any good, so now I need to adapt a system that works for me and minimizes the time spent obsessing about a specific rejection when I should be getting the story back on the market.

WARLIGHT ACCEPTANCE (TENTATIVE)

This week hasn’t been all bad–I just found out that Carrol Fix, the editor behind the Visions series at Lillicat Publishers, has just ACCEPTED my short story entitled, WarLight! It should be published in Visions VI: Galaxies! It will be published fairly soon, the middle of November. I’ll keep everyone posted on this exciting development and will blog about it again when the anthology is released.

CHILDE ROLAND ON SHORTLIST

Also, received an email letting me know that Childe Roland has been “shortlisted” for a market (that I will not name just yet). Shortlisting means that it survived the first round of rejections and made it to the “short list” of potential stories. This particular market will have a 2nd round of “voting” for stories and if it survives this test, it will be accepted for publication. This is the 2nd story this year that has managed to make it to the shortlist (I, Magi made it earlier this year for a different market, but didn’t ultimately make the cut.)

So, I’m really concentrating hard on both the creative side of writing–I’ve finished two stories since summer, and on the business side of writing–refining my submission process and managing two publications (so far) this year!